


Cohen (& Moody)

by Annakovsky



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter - Rowling, The OC
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-War, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-10
Updated: 2005-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-09 13:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/pseuds/Annakovsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seth Cohen and Mad-Eye Moody are roommates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cohen (& Moody)

**Author's Note:**

> In apartment #2 in my building, the name on the mailbox says _Cohen (&amp; Moody)_. And every day when I get my mail, I think, _Why would Seth Cohen and Mad-Eye Moody be roommates?_ This fic is solely to satisfy my own bizarre curiosity. Also, pay no attention to issues of timeline, HP chronology is messed up and we don't care about it.
> 
> Thanks to Kyra for the beta.

This is how Brooke breaks up with him - he comes home from class and all her stuff is gone. There isn't anything left in her room except a couple of paperclips on the floor and the furniture the place came with. And a piece of paper on the desk, blue-lined and still jagged at the edges from being ripped out of a notebook, but it just says, "Sorry." Not even signed, or addressed to him, or with an explanation or anything cheesy like, "I'll always love you." Not even song lyrics. Just "Sorry," like she was constrained to write only using the names of Milton Bradley board games.

When he calls her cell, it rings three times. Then she answers, says, "Seth, I can't talk to you right now," and hangs up again.

This is probably karma from that time he took off on his sailboat and left Summer a note explaining. But he was sixteen then, and even with the karma thing, this doesn't seem quite fair. At least when *he* left a note, he had had the decency to write three agonized emo pages that quoted Death Cab, Dashboard Confessional *and* Taking Back Sunday. See? He cared.

When Ryan calls three hours later, Seth's still lying on his back on the bare mattress of Brooke's bed. In the dark room, his cell phone's display lights up green. "Kid Chino," it says.

"This isn't really a good time," Seth says into the phone. "I have quite a full schedule of moping planned for the evening. Perhaps we could chat tomorrow."

"This isn't about the thing in the latest X-Men, is it?" Ryan asks.

"What? Oh. No, not that, though now that you bring it up, I did find the storyline to be a little - "

"Seth," Ryan interrupts. There is an expectant silence. Seth closes his eyes.

"I think Brooke broke up with me," he says.

There is a pause. "What do you mean, you think?" Ryan asks.

"Well. Since when I got home from class all her stuff was gone and she won't answer my calls except for one where she told me she wasn't talking to me, I think it's likely, but not necessarily certain, that she has broken up with me."

"Ouch," Ryan says.

"You said it, buddy," Seth says. He puts the hand not holding the phone against his eyelid and pushes until he can see patterns of light, geometries of stars, flying towards him.

"What happened?" Ryan asks.

Seth takes a deep breath and breathes out, thinking. "I don't know," he says finally. "Like, things were fine until maybe two weeks ago? And then she kind of got weird, but... I don't know. She kept staying out all night, and being all twitchy and, like, accidentally breaking stuff. And she starting wearing this big cross around her neck all the time."

"Huh," Ryan says slowly.

"And then yesterday we were in the Square and this weird old guy came up to us and started talking to her about, like, Megadeth? Or some lame band. Which, you know, whatever, crazy homeless guy, except that he looked like a professor and Brooke got really freaked out and rushed me out of there like he was saying something she didn't want me to know about."

"An old guy was talking to you about Megadeth?"

"Well, not old, more middle-aged. But still. It was weird."

"Yeah," Ryan says. He pauses thoughtfully and adds, "Maybe she joined a cult."

"Right, a cult of lame-ass death metal from the mid-'90s."

Still, when he sees Brooke get on AIM three nights later, this is how the conversation goes:

**sethtacular47**: thanks alot for the note  
**technicolorgrrl88**: yeah... sorry.   
**sethtacular47**: so you said.  
**sethtacular47**: where are you?  
**technicolorgrrl88**: um. cleveland.   
**technicolorgrrl88**: not that it's your business.  
**sethtacular47**: cleveland?!?!?!?!  
**sethtacular47**: did you join a cult  
**sethtacular47**: ?  
**technicolorgrrl88**: what? no!!!!  
**sethtacular47**: then what the hell?  
**technicolorgrrl88**: i just decided to transfer, okay?   
**sethtacular47**: TO CLEVELAND?!?!  
**technicolorgrrl88**: look, seth, i can't talk to you about this right now. i'll email you or something.  
**technicolorgrrl88 signed off at 10:53:48 PM**

Which probably means she's blocked him. Nice. He IMs Ryan.

**sethtacular47**: she's in cleveland, and she blocked me.  
**r_atwood**: suck  
**sethtacular47**: Cleveland!!! who moves to cleveland?!?!  
**r_atwood**: I have no idea.  
**sethtacular47**: whatever, shes a freak. how's Berkeley?  
**r_atwood**: okay. how's harvard?  
**sethtacular47**: it blows.

At the end of the month, Seth calls his dad to remind him to send an extra $800 for Brooke's half of the rent.

"Eight hundred dollars?" Sandy says, incredulous even though he *knows* what their rent is.

"It's Boston, Dad."

"How's finding another roommate coming?"

"Father," Seth says. "I am mourning the end of a relationship here. I'm not really in the mood to be finding a new roommate."

"Well, you better *get* in the mood," Sandy says. "Because I am not sending you an extra $800 a month on top of what I already send you."

"Da-ad," Seth groans.

"Either that or get a job,"

"Fine!" Seth says. "I'll find someone."

Ironically, it's that night that is The Explosion of Great Britain. Nuclear missiles hit London, Durham, and a castle in Scotland. Or, it's assumed that the explosions were from nuclear missiles, though no one is quite sure where they came from. Various other acts of terrorism occur throughout the United Kingdom on the same night, and aside from the violent deaths, half of the nation is found dead without a mark on them. Seth stays up watching the news, and it feels like 9/11.

There are only a few thousand survivors when it's all over. The UN evacuates them from Britain, unwilling to leave them there when they aren't sure if it's safe. Radiation, disease, whatever it is that made so many people die all at once. Everyone is afraid, and no answers are forthcoming.

America takes almost all of the survivors as refugees, and the government puts out a plea for housing. Seth volunteers.

***

It's only three days before the government gets the paperwork done to put a refugee in Seth's apartment. The old man appears at four in the afternoon, holding a battered suitcase in one hand.

"Er... hi," Seth says when he opens the door.

The old - or so Seth assumes - man is the strangest person Seth has ever seen. His face is so jagged and scarred his age is impossible to determine, he has a wooden leg, and one of his eyes is missing. That eyelid lies flat over an empty socket, and his remaining eye is shrewd and beady. He regards Seth as though Seth is something mildly distasteful that the man is too polite to mention.

"I'm Seth," Seth says awkwardly after a few long moments, in which the man surveys the apartment thoroughly, as though looking for threats.

"Moody," the man says finally, still peering into the corners. "Alastor Moody. But you can call me Mad-Eye."

"Um... okay," Seth says, immediately knowing that he never, ever will. He shows Moody to Brooke's room and hovers in the doorway as Moody puts his suitcase on the bed. "Did... your face," Seth says. "Is that all from the Explosion?" He doesn't see how it could be, but who knows?

"Hmm?" says Moody distractedly, then barks a laugh. "No, boy. These are earlier war wounds. Potter had nothing to do with these."

"Who?" Seth says.

Moody sits on the bed. "No one."

The look on his face, exhaustion and sadness and regret, makes Seth feel like an intruder. He backs quietly out of the room and Moody doesn't seem to notice.

"I have the weirdest roommate in the world," Seth tells Ryan on the phone in a low voice. Moody's out, but has a tendency to reappear when you least expect it.

"Yeah?" Ryan asks. He sounds mildly amused.

"This is no laughing matter, Ryan," Seth says. "He's really freaking me out. Like, he wants me to call him 'Mad-Eye.'"

"Maybe he's a superhero," Ryan says.

"Ha ha ha," Seth says. "And he's totally scarred all over so he barely looks human. And weird stuff keeps happening around him."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Stuff. I swear I saw a spoon stirring his soup by itself."

"Uh huh."

"I'm serious," Seth says weakly, but he barely even believes himself.

That night Seth wakes up abruptly to see Moody in his room, peeking through the blinds and muttering something under his breath. Seth screams.

Moody starts and then glares at Seth. "That scream made me break eye contact. This is no way to run a war - it requires CONSTANT VIGILANCE." Then he says a long Latin word, and when Seth wakes up in the morning, he doesn't remember any of it - just has a dim impression of a strange dream, of a dark hooded figure out the window and Moody's empty eye socket filled with an eye that moved on its own.

Seth changes the names on the mailbox - crosses out Brooke's _Ritter_ emphatically, and beside the _Cohen_ squeezes in _(&amp; Moody)_ in the margin. Not that Moody ever gets any mail. The few times there's been an envelope for him it hasn't been put in the metal mailbox at all, but left in front of the door. Letters in green ink on thick parchment, occasionally charred around the edges. Moody becomes drastically edgier after these letters, so Seth is glad they don't come often.

Every night Seth has dreams, odd ones, and he doesn't feel rested when he wakes up. He dreams of owls, of a cat that turns into a woman, of people wearing robes and looking drawn. Of a flying carpet, once, and people pointing sticks at him. Always of fear. Once when he wakes up he finds a splash of blood on the hem of his pajama pants, and can't figure out how it got there. He worries.

After a few weeks, Moody discovers TV. He especially seems to enjoy _Charmed_, laughing uproariously at parts Seth is pretty sure aren't meant to be funny.

Moody eats all the peanut butter, and has a tendency to leave the remote on top of the TV. When it's cold out, he borrows Seth's jacket without asking. Between these habits and not ever feeling rested, Seth is going slowly insane. One Wednesday Seth flops on the couch to once again see the remote out of his reach. He sighs and reaches out towards it concentrating his mind on pulling the remote towards him. _Use the force, Seth_, he thinks, before he hears a gruff chuckle.

"Having any luck with that?" Moody asks, stumping into the room.

Seth rubs the back of his neck self-consciously. "Uh... not really."

To his surprise Moody puts his large, craggy hand on Seth's forehead. It's warm and dry, and he leaves it there for a long moment, as though checking to see if Seth has a fever. Finally, he pats Seth's head and removes the hand. "No, you're the Mugglest of Muggles, aren't you, lad?" He is looking at Seth with something like pity, and retrieves the remote control for him.

"Thanks," Seth says, confused. "What did you call me?" But Moody's already left the room.

The government found Moody a job, as a security guard at one of the Harvard libraries. He looks strangely diminished in the uniform, small and out of place in a way that Seth can't quite define. He works his shifts dutifully and comes home looking tired.

One night after dark, when Moody has the evening shift and Seth is attempting to read a long section of Josephus for his history class there is a rapid pounding at the door, loud and panicked. When Seth tentatively opens it, the person on the other side pushes through and slams the door behind him, turning the deadbolt and breathing heavily, as though he's been running.

"Hey!" Seth says, taken aback. The young man turns towards him and sways dangerously, like he's about to collapse from exhaustion. Seth instinctively puts out a hand to steady him, only realizing after he's touched him and felt the sticky warmth that the man is covered in blood. "Who the hell are you?" Seth asks, his whole body recoiling as he snatches his hand back. The man - well, boy, almost, since he seems to be about Seth's age - just stands there, his dark hair messy and standing up in tufts, his clothing, which appears to have originally been some kind of robe, torn badly. Broken glasses balance precariously on his nose, and his skinny frame slumps against the door. Blood is all over him, from the smear on his forehead to the toes of his sneakers.

"I'm looking for Mad-Eye Moody," the guy says in an English accent.

Seth is slowly backing towards the phone. "Um, he's not here right now. But I'll let him know you stopped by." He grabs the cordless and hits the 9 of 911 before the guy says, "Ax yo phone!" and the phone pulls itself out of Seth's hand and flies into the lunatic's.

Seth blinks hard and starts to feel a little woozy. "Please don't kill me," he mumbles, and tries to think what Ryan would do in this situation.

"Don't give me a reason to," the guy says. He's pointing some kind of stick at Seth, and Seth has a strong sensation of déjà vu, though he doesn't know why. "Sit," the guy says, and gestures towards the couch. Seth sits, without exactly knowing why he's obeying. He feels a little dreamy, calm and happy.

The guy pulls a straight chair out from the desk and sits down heavily, without taking his eyes off Seth. From the way he slouches, Seth wonders how much of the blood is his own - he seems to be keeping himself from collapsing by sheer force of will.

"Are you hurt?" Seth asks. He's feeling less woozy and sharper now.

"No!" the guy says defiantly. "I'm fine." Seth starts to get up. "Hold still!" the guy says, then says something Seth doesn't understand. Ropes come out of nowhere to bind Seth's hands and feet.

Seth yelps. "Who the hell are you?" He feels like he's going to throw up, and his heart is pounding.

The guy blinks once and seems to consider. "Harry," he says finally. "You're a Muggle?"

"A what?" Seth says, and Harry nods. He pushes his broken glasses farther up his nose.

"That's what I thought," Harry says. He looks around the living room with interest and after a moment picks up a framed picture from the coffee table. In the midst of all his other worries, Seth hopes he's not getting blood on it. "This is your family?" Harry asks. Seth nods. "Your brother doesn't look like you," Harry says. "I guess he looks more like your mum."

"Oh," Seth says. His voice is rough, so he clears his throat. "He's my foster brother, actually. That's why we don't look alike."

"Foster brother," Harry says, and his eyes are cloudy and far away. He is growing paler and paler by the minute. "Does he live in a cupboard under the stairs?"

"Um," Seth says slowly. "No."

Harry looks at him without energy. The arm holding the stick he's been pointing at Seth this entire time is beginning to sag, as though Harry is too tired or hurt to hold it up. "You're happy?" Harry asks. Seth shrugs as much as the ropes allow him. His heart is still racing. "How old are you?" Harry asks.

"Twenty," Seth says, through his dry mouth.

"Me too," Harry says. He scratches his cheek with his free hand and a bit of dried blood flakes off. "What, you go to university?" He's frowning, and still looks drawn and faint.

"Yeah," Seth says. He clears his throat again. "It's boring."

Harry's breathing is getting labored, and he puts his hand to his side. Seth can see it is wet with blood when Harry takes it away. "Have you ever killed anyone?" Harry asks, looking at his hand. He seems strangely detached.

"No," Seth says.

Harry nods, and his eyes look flat and glassy, still staring at his bloody hand. "I killed Ron," he says, in a dead sort of voice. There is a long pause, and the only thing Seth can hear is the rushing of blood in his ears. Harry's eyes flick to Seth's face. "Do you know Ron?" he asks, and it is as though he is speaking from a great distance, as though he has forgotten who Seth is. "Ron Weasley?" Seth shakes his head. "He's my best friend," Harry says in that same dead voice. "This is mostly his blood."

"Oh," Seth mumbles when Harry seems to expect a response.

The ropes are beginning to chafe Seth's wrists, and Harry is looking at him like he wants... something. They sit in silence as Harry's blinks get longer and longer and his head drifts toward his chest. The only sound is the occasional splat when a drop of Harry's blood hits the floor. Seth begins to try to get out of the bonds, but they're tied too tightly.

Finally he hears Moody's key in the lock. Harry starts and half turns towards the door, watching Moody push it open. "Mad-Eye," he croaks out, and then tips sideways. Moody leaps to catch him before he falls off his chair, and seems to immediately take in the whole situation: Harry's blood everywhere, his torn clothing, Seth tied up on the couch. Suddenly Moody is businesslike and authoritative in a way Seth has never seen him. He seems to be assessing Harry's condition - Harry appears to be unconscious.

"Did he say what happened?" Moody asks brusquely.

"Uh... he said he killed someone named Ron," Seth stutters out.

Moody swears and somehow manages to pick Harry up completely in his arms. "I've got to get him help," he says. Then he seems to see Seth for the first time, and squints at the ropes binding him. Moody says a word and the ropes vanish; then without warning he and Harry disappear completely.

Seth sits on the couch staring at the puddle of blood on his floor and trying to get a handle on himself for a good twenty minutes. It's as though his brain has shut itself down for repairs.

He doesn't look up until someone pushes open the door, which Moody left unlatched. It's a girl about Seth's age; brown frizzy hair, face haggard. A stick like the one Harry held dangles from her right hand.

Seth is too tired to even react. He slumps into the couch and says, "Oh, more of you people, excellent, just what I need."

She is staring at the blood pooled on his floor. "Moody sent me to... uh. Clean up." She's English too.

"Great," Seth says. "Fantastic. Best night ever."

"That's Harry's blood," she says, and Seth can't tell if it's a question or not.

"Yeah," he says anyway. "Sure. Yeah. And probably some from the guy he killed, too. He was covered in it."

Her face twists like she's about to cry, but she beats it back. Seth almost feels sorry for her, almost admires her control, but he's too angry and exhausted and terrified to spare any compassion. He just stares at her defiantly. "You gonna kill me?"

She looks shocked. "What? Of course not!"

"Then get out of here," he says and stands up, rubbing the back of his neck where a crick has started.

"Hold on," she says, and bends down to the puddle. She sighs, then dips her thumb into their blood and marks an x on her left hand.

"More magic or whatever the hell you people do?" Seth asks. He slouches against the doorjamb between the living room and the kitchen.

"No," she says, looking down at her hands. She closes her eyes for a moment. "I'm just the only one of us left. Of me and Harry and Ron. So it seems like...." She trails off. "I don't know. I don't want to just leave their blood there."

"Harry's dead?" Seth asks.

"No," she says. "But he's not... the same."

Seth sighs. "It's not like you're going to answer me or anything, but what the hell is going on?"

The girl looks at him and gestures vaguely with the stick she's holding. "There's a war," she says. "Wizards and witches, we're fighting it. Moody's an Auror, the best one - that means he hunts dark wizards. I'm in strategy, for the good guys. And Harry Potter, who just killed Ron Weasley, is the one destined to save the wizarding world. Or not. It's all very muddled and prophetic and weighty and I think Harry has finally gone completely mad. Or else Ron had us all fooled. Or... I don't know what."

"A war," Seth says dubiously. "Is that what happened to England? You all did that?"

"Yes," she says. "Yes."

"And you're supposed to be the good guys?"

She shrugs helplessly and her face twists. "Who knows any more? I'm beginning to think the war will never end, and maybe that means the bad guys have already won."

There is a long pause where they just look at each other, the girl very pale, Seth confused and angry. Finally she looks away, glancing around the room at his posters and pictures and school books. She gets a wistful look on her face. "You go to university?"

Seth rolls his eyes. "Yes, I go to university. Why do you people keep asking that?"

She touches the cover of his biology textbook gently. "It's so normal," she says, a longing note in her voice. Then she straightens. "Well," she says. "It was nice meeting you, Seth."

"Right," he says, and realizes she never said her name. He looks at her and she supplies it for him. "Right, Hermione," he continues. "So clean up already."

She points her stick - wand, maybe? - at the bloody chair and floor and mutters a word that makes the mess disappear. Then she turns and walks right up to him. She puts her thumb, still sticky with Harry and Ron's blood, to Seth's forehead and says a word that sounds to him like 'obliterate'. In the split second before he forgets everything that's happened, the word conjures up images of guns and tanks and bombs and napalm, destruction and annihilation.

When he wakes up in the morning, and goes to brush his teeth, he is startled by the bloody smear on his forehead, dried brown and flaking. He washes it off and looks for a cut underneath, but his skin is smooth and unbroken.

Seth has the vague feeling, for no reason that he can think of, that Moody won't be there. But the door to Moody's bedroom is cracked slightly open, and through it Seth can see Moody snoring, sound asleep on top of his covers. Even so, Seth can't shake his feeling of unease, the feeling that something big has happened, something awful.

He text messages Ryan. _u ever wonder if evry1 around u is a super hero and ur just lois lane?_

_No_, Ryan texts back fifteen minutes later.

He checks his email, and Brooke's written him about how she just decided to transfer because Case Western's engineering program is really more what she's looking for, and that she's really sorry and she'd like to still be friends, and don't worry, Seth, she didn't join a cult or anything, and sometimes things just don't work out between people and it's nobody's fault.

Everything is normal, everything has a rational explanation. He goes to class and afterwards eats lunch with Zain and Andre and Jessica and they talk about _The Real World_ and about whether the Killers suck or are awesome. He walks Jessica back to her dorm, and she is normal, and he is normal and everything is normal. But when he watches an episode of M*A*S*H later, the worn-down expression on Hawkeye's face seems familiar, like he's seen it somewhere recently, though he can't place it.

He dreams of owls.

***  
END


End file.
